In plastics molding, most of the flash that has flowed out to the mating faces of the fixed and movable mold halves and adhered thereto is taken out together with the molded articles when the latter is taken out, but even a trace of residual flash adhering to the mold faces interferes with complete closure of the molds for the next molding operation bringing about various troubles, particularly the formation of defective moldings, so that it is necessary to clean the mold faces by removing flash upon completion of each molding operation.
Particularly where the plastic material is an epoxy type thermosetting plastic material whose adhesion to the mold faces is strong, removal of flash by manual operation is very difficult, and moreover, if mold closure is effected with even a very small amount of flash adhering thereto, the result is the creation of a very high local surface pressure which would damage the mating faces of the molds.
To avoid the danger and inefficiency of manual flash removal operations, there has been developed a cleansing means which comprises blowing air against the mold faces, peeling flash adhering to the mold faces by a rotary brush, and sucking away said flash.
With this cleaning means using a rotary brush as a flash peeling member, however, the flash peeling action of said brush is only to the extent of simply rubbing the flash with its bristles, so that even if a cooling means using an air blow is used in combination with the rubbing means using the rotary brush, effective peeling of flash cannot be expected, and a considerably long period of time is still required for complete peeling of flash. Thus, the cleaning means contributes little to increasing the production of the plastic moldings.
To solve the aforesaid problem, there has previously been invented an apparatus for cleaning mold faces which comprises brush members disposed in opposed relation to the plastics forming mold faces, suitable vibrating means for vibrating said brush members so that the front ends of said brush members beat, break, and peel the flash that has remained adhered to the mold faces, and suction a means for sucking the peeled flash away from the mold faces to remove the flash. However, it has been found that even with this apparatus, satisfactory removal of flash is impossible.